Case Number 00876

AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD

The Charge

On this river, God never finished his creation.

Opening Statement

As a young man, Werner Herzog shared a ramshackle boarding house with an
intense young actor named Klaus Kinski. Herzog stood by, with astonishment and
awe, as Kinski flew into tantrum after tantrum, railing at everyone and
demolishing everything within sight. Years later, when he ventured into the
Amazon jungle, armed with a stolen camera and accompanied by a ragtag crew of
filmmakers to create a film called Aguirre, he knew what he was getting
into when he invited Kinski to join him. But he also knew it was really the only
option.

Facts of the Case

It is 1561. In the wake of Cortez's conquest of Mexico, battalions of
European treasure-seekers have invaded South America, hoping to achieve wealth,
fame and immortality through a regime of genocide and plunder. Gonzalo Pizarro,
a Conquistador who helped exterminate the Incan Empire, has led a massive,
overburdened expedition into the Peruvian rainforest in search of El Dorado, the
legendary city of gold.

Nearly sinking into the boglike jungle, Pizarro's company reaches a
standstill. He delegates a party of forty soldiers to set out downriver, hunting
for signs of gold. If they do not return within a week, he says, the company
will presume they are dead, and trudge back to civilization. The scouting party
is led by a soldier named Ursua, but almost immediately his authority is
threatened by Don Lopa de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski), an intense, misshapen man
whose avarice and audacity make the other Conquistadors look like a bunch of
martyrs.

When Indians within the jungle threaten the party, Aguirre seizes the
opportunity to stage a mutiny. He establishes an oafish aristocrat as the
Emperor of El Dorado, and commands the party through this figurehead. With an
unstable power structure and an unstable raft, they move down the river; and as
their supplies dwindle, their peril grows, and their minds begin to collapse
under the jungle's feverish spell, Aguirre grows more and more manic in his
apocalyptic visions of grandeur.

The Evidence

Herzog is an uncompromising filmmaker whose works have, as their lynchpins,
visions of surreal, breathtaking intensity. He is an auteur who believes that
great films should show us things we have never seen before. He is also doggedly
utilitarian, in the sense that he knows the best, most powerful way to present
those things is to accomplish them. Therefore, to create the story of the
Conquistadors waging war against the jungle, he simply took his crew there...and
waged war against the jungle.

Most directors would flee in terror when confronted with everything Herzog
was up against. Certainly, no Hollywood studio would ever fund so haphazard a
project. But Herzog's half-mad ambition is what makes Aguirre so
magnificent a film, because so much of it is translated directly onto the
screen. The only other film I can think of which shares its harrowing sense of
truth is Apocalypse Now, another epic river journey into the heart of
darkness. Apart from that, and some of Herzog's other films, nothing ever put to
celluloid comes close to Aguirre's sense of intense, authentic
struggle.

To make Aguirre, Herzog had to tame two raging forces of nature at
once. On the one hand, he had the jungle, with its heat, humidity, disease, and
wildlife; on the other, he had Kinski, who threw tantrums, made unreasonable
demands, and recklessly endangered his cast and crewmates on more than one
occasion. At one point, when Kinski threatened to leave the shoot, Herzog
allegedly threatened him with death, rather than see his vision come apart. Once
again, however, all these trials somehow manage to make it onto the screen, with
Kinski's building mania matching Herzog's urgent yet poetic camerawork.

There are many spectacular components to this movie, and the Anchor Bay DVD
does justice to most of them. The colours and details are rich and bright; you'd
never know the film was almost thirty years old. I noticed one or two small
instances of shimmering in the trees, but considering how much of the film has
foliage and/or water in the background, it's a very impressive transfer.
Likewise, Herzog's soundscape, including Florian Fricke's hallucinatory score,
is admirably delivered, with the German soundtrack in Dolby 5.1 Surround (the
dubbed English version is in mono).

The extras consist of a lacklustre trailer, talent files for Herzog and
Kinski, and a director's commentary which beautifully complements the film.
Aguirre is one of those movies that demands an explanation, and it's
wonderful to hear Herzog off-handedly confirm for you that, yes, all those
things you see happened pretty much as you see them. They dropped a cannon off a
cliff to blow it up. They scaled the mountain with a complement of horses, pigs,
and sedan chairs. They built a wooden ship and stuck it in the branches of a
towering tree.

Herzog also discusses his conflicts with Kinski in the commentary. A lot of
this material was also covered in his recent documentary, My Best Fiend
-- but if you're new to the weird world of Herzog, I'd suggest starting here,
with Aguirre and the commentary. It's more fitting, somehow, to hear
about Kinski's outrages when you have the finished beauty of the film to hold up
against it.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

[Editor's Note: It's come to my attention that Scott's comments below are
inaccurate. Reader Tim Sniffin informed me that the film was indeed released
with a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. I confirmed this information at Werner Herzog's
official website, which is the only director's site I've seen that lists
the technical details for their films. After receiving still another email from
a reader who claimed to have seen it in widescreen theatrically, I wrote to
Werner Herzog Film, who said in no uncertain terms that it was shot and released
with a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. There you have it people -- the DVD does have
the original aspect ratio. I've retained Scott's comments, but be aware that,
even though they are well conceived arguments, they are factually
incorrect.]

There's only one aspect of the DVD that doesn't satisfy, and while it's not
quite enough to ruin the disc for me, it certainly threw me for a loop.
Full-frame?! What were they thinking? I can't believe that Aguirre wasn't
shot in widescreen. Ten years later, Herzog would return to the jungle to shoot
Fitzcarraldo -- with the same camera, no less -- in 1.75:1. When Anchor
Bay released that film, they sensibly presented it in all its widescreen glory.
They would do the same for Cobra Verde, Nosferatu, and
Woyzeck. So why would Aguirre get full-frame?

What's worse, I detected the tell-tale signs of pan and scanning. In one
scene, the camera is meant to linger on Aguirre and an Indian flute player. Not
only is Kinski's face cut in half by the framing (something neither Herzog nor
Kinski would have condoned), but near the end of the scene, you can see the
jerky pan-and-scan movement trying to keep both actors in the shot.

With anything else, from Anaconda to Jungle 2 Jungle, I would
just shake my head and go on to the next rant. But for a film as resplendently
visual as Aguirre -- a film where the relationship between the humans in
the foreground and the jungle on all sides is so vital to its theme -- I just
don't get it.

Closing Statement

Once in a while, I will muse about the cost of filmmaking -- not the dollars
and cents cost (which is scary enough), but rather the human cost, the cost on
our environment, our bodies and our souls. Was it really worth demolishing a
hundred acres of pristine, ecologically unique Southeast Asian seacoast to make
a popcorn flick like The Beach? Should Vic Morrow and the two kids have
died while filming Twilight Zone: The Movie?

Generally, my sad response to these sorts of questions is no. But when I
think about the anguish that went in to Aguirre, the Wrath of God...and
then contrast it with the solemn, somehow modest magnificence of the film
itself...well, it makes me feel as though no sacrifice is too great. This is
what filmmaking should be about.

The Verdict

Herzog, Kinski et. al. are cleared of all charges; but Anchor Bay is ordered
to undergo a drug test, in an attempt to ascertain exactly what they were on
when they decided to release Aguirre in full-frame.